This is a personal project by @dellsystem. I built this to
help me retain
information from the books I'm reading. Currently can only be used by
a single user (myself), but I plan to extend it to support multiple
users eventually.

July 25, 2018

This is a really excellent meditation on two contrasting perspectives on the role that technology plays in rising inequality. First, we have the mainstream approach, nicely summarised by the concept of skills-biased technological change: assuming “reasonably efficient markets”, technology stratifies workers by technological skill, and allows those who are more productive to reap more of the rewards. The critical approach, on the other hand, sees markets as always “pervaded by power”, and thus skewed in ways that are never neutral; technology is always deployed on uneven terrain, and its effects can only be properly understand by looking at bargaining power and class interests.

This blog post is essentially an exegesis of the first approach, and it’s well worth reading to understand 1) why the mainstream view is so popular; and 2) what that view is missing. Summarised neatly in the last paragraph:

So, the fundamental problem of the leading mainstream view is that it takes both markets and technology as having a more-or-less natural and necessary shape, and fails to see how institutions shape both markets and technology in ways that can reinforce or moderate patterns of inequality.

This is a really excellent meditation on two contrasting perspectives on the role that technology plays in rising inequality. First, we have the mainstream approach, nicely summarised by the concept of skills-biased technological change: assuming “reasonably efficient markets”, technology stratifies workers by technological skill, and allows those who are more productive to reap more of the rewards. The critical approach, on the other hand, sees markets as always “pervaded by power”, and thus skewed in ways that are never neutral; technology is always deployed on uneven terrain, and its effects can only be properly understand by looking at bargaining power and class interests.

This blog post is essentially an exegesis of the first approach, and it’s well worth reading to understand 1) why the mainstream view is so popular; and 2) what that view is missing. Summarised neatly in the last paragraph:

So, the fundamental problem of the leading mainstream view is that it takes both markets and technology as having a more-or-less natural and necessary shape, and fails to see how institutions shape both markets and technology in ways that can reinforce or moderate patterns of inequality.